Paul Watson, the captain of the anti-whaling protest ship Sea Shepherd. Photo / NZ Herald
Paul Watson, the captain of the anti-whaling protest ship Sea Shepherd. Photo / NZ Herald
The vexed question of where the boundary lies between environmental activism and terrorism (thoughtfully explored in the documentary If A Tree Falls in the recent film festival) gets the once-over-lightly here.
It's a shame, since Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is the embodiment of one extreme onthe pacifist/activist spectrum.
He dismisses Greenpeace as "the Avon ladies" of environmental activism ("Taking pictures and hanging banners isn't going to change anything"); old colleagues describe him variously as the Rambo and the pitbull terrier of the business.
The burly, bearded Watson is a familiar figure in this neck of the woods, having headed up many summers of raids on the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. The Ady Gil, which sunk after colliding with the Shonan Maru 2 in January 2010, was a Sea Shepherd vessel, but the group has given as good as it gets: Watson scuttled two Icelandic whalers in harbour and has a ramming manoeuvre he calls "Operation Asshole", after the angle of approach.
But despite its title, this film doesn't take us far in understanding him as an individual - he's plainly angry at his dad - and does little by way of challenging him to explain his dedication to aggressive, not to say violent, action. Largely, one suspects, that's down to the man whose blunt, even arrogant, approach has earned him admirers and detractors in equal numbers, along with a large bunch of celebrity supporters.
Even his wife calls him a narcissist, but her tone is admiring - perhaps less so when he peremptorily dumps her for another woman.
Watson himself says plainly that he doesn't like human beings - "they are not moral creatures", he says, which seems at best a rather sweeping generalisation - and says he's acting not for human posterity, but for the whales and the fishes.
To her credit, Canadian director Dolman steers a middle course between hagiography and hatchet job and has assembled some thrilling high-seas footage of some of the Sea Shepherd actions.
Whether you think he's a self-important and self-obsessed bully, or, as David Suzuki says, one of the "shock troops pushing the boundaries of our sensibility", the film provides plenty of material to chew over.
Stars: 3.5/5 Director: Trish Dolman Running time: 110 mins Rating: Exempt Verdict: Whale of a tale
